LBS Blockchain Delegate Communication Thread

Governance
1

Key Info

Introduction

LBS Blockchain is a student and professional society at the London Business School (LBS) set up in 2021 to empower the next generation of LBS business leaders to pursue the fast-growing opportunities in web3. We focus on:

  • Education: Educating our peers on blockchain technology and new protocols in development in the ecosystem
  • Career Opportunities: Helping students place into roles in web3 and network within the wider web3 community
  • Entrepreneurship: Leveraging the entrepreneurial talent at LBS to originate capital and bring ventures to market
  • Governance: Participating as delegates in leading DAOs and incubating our own experiments in on-chain governance

The LBS Blockchain Society is currently the fastest growing and most active society at LBS, having gained over 700+ Telegram members and organising numerous events for our internal and wider London community. This includes hosting our flagship Blockchain Conference, where we invite 250+ students, alumni and industry leaders to participate in 3 days of panel sessions, workshops, hackathon events and more.

Delegate Statement (why you should delegate to us)

LBS is a globally top-ranked business school and hosts one of the most internationally diverse student bodies. Strategically located in London, LBS students are experts in wide ranging subject matters, from financial markets, to organisational theory, to data science and more. Given the diversity of cultural and professional backgrounds amongst the student cohort, LBS students are highly entrepreneurial by nature. In 2021, London Business School entrepreneurs raised a cumulative $4B of funding in 2021, while our alumni have founded over 560 companies so far, including unicorns such as HelloFresh, Feedzai, Wayflyer, Livspace, and many more.

Despite our short history, we have been delegates to MakerDAO from May 2022 to April 2023 (through the a16z Token Delegate Programme) and Aave since October 2022. As such, we have acquired governance expertise that we believe will assist with our decision-making on Arbitrum. We always commit to voting independently and impartially, and to open source our rationale through frequent updates to this thread. We intend for such transparency to help anchor our thinking and hold ourselves accountable to the Arbitrum community.

Given our presence in Europe and the potential for partnerships beyond the governance programme, we see a natural synergy here for the society to be further involved with the activities of the network. As stated above, one of our objectives is to act as a facilitator in connecting the talent in our community to industry. We do so by organising large-scale events, workshops, networking sessions and more, as well as by directly helping to place students into roles in industry. Given the need for talent in a growing ecosystem like Arbitrum’s, we see significant scope for synergies both in and beyond our role as delegates.

We commit to dedicate our time and resources to help accelerate Arbitrum’s development and growth. We commit also to leverage our global network, business knowledge, and entrepreneurial mindset, to drive value for Arbitrum token holders.

Conflicts of Interest

Members of our team are founders of projects with a presence in other Layer 1 and Layer 2 ecosystems. We also hold personal portfolios of network tokens that give us financial exposure to the growth of these ecosystems.

That said, LBS Blockchain currently does not currently have any material conflicts of interest regarding Arbitrum. In particular, as a society, we do not hold any cryptocurrencies besides a minor stake in Ethereum for voting gas purposes, nor do we currently accept membership fees. We agree to keep the Arbitrum community updated should any future conflicts of interest arise.

Waiver of Liability

By delegating to LBS Blockchain, you acknowledge and agree that LBS Blockchain will participate on a best-efforts basis and will not be liable for any form of damages related to participation in the Arbitrum Protocol or this DAO.

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Proposal: The Arbitrum Coalition

Vote: Against

Rationale: We support the initiative to professionalise DAO operations by involving professional contributors like BWR, Gauntlet and TOB. However, the proposed budget is overly expensive for the intended scope, and lacks sufficient cost breakdowns and measurable KPIs to justify its passage. Moreover, there is a potential hazard of centralisation in voting power as the Coalition would have 25% influence over the Security Council.

While we agree with the underlying goal of augmenting governance effectiveness, our support for establishing such a council hinges on a thorough budget reassessment, alongside a provision of more detailed financial breakdowns and specific KPIs. If this vote passes, we would like to see a revised proposal enumerating the reasoning behind these points. If it does not pass, we are keen to support it once revised.

Consolidate Security Proposals into a RFP Process

Vote: For

Rationale: The RFP process to onboard qualified security service providers ensures no single auditor can dominate the space. This preserves the decentralized ethos of the DAO and fosters a competitive yet collaborative environment where the security services are of better cost-effectiveness, higher quality, and more flexibility in response to the needs of the ecosystem.

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Proposal to Backfund Successful STIP Proposals

Vote: For

Rationale: We support this proposal to backfund projects from Round 1 of the STIP and ensure broad-based support for this cohort. We understand that the est. 21M cost for 26 approved projects constitutes c. 10% of budgeted spend for Q4 2023, and we see this as a good use of funds in terms of investing in growth, building out the ecosystem, and supporting smaller and more innovative projects to improve the diversity and resiliency of the ecosystem. That said, we would caution against future repeated use of backfunding as it may set the wrong precedent for overruling due process (incl. funding prospects for STIP Round 2).

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Proposal to Funding Gas Rebate and Trading Competition Program to Amplify Arbitrum’s Ecosystem Growth

Vote: Against

Rationale: We consider the funding request of 1.5M ARB is disproportionate in light of the current status and maturity of Rage Trade, particularly with V2 still being in beta. Moreover, incentivising trading on a single platform runs the risk of picking winners, which we see as bad DAO governance. We share other community member’s concerns regarding the long-term impact and sustainability of these types of initiatives. Given these factors, we recommend against funding this proposal.

If Arbitrum DAO were to consider a similar proposal in the future, we would recommend tendering proposals from a broad selection of DEX protocols (i.e., not just Rage Trade) to ensure incentives are distributed broadly and fairly.

1 Like